Part 11 (1/2)

'That's just my point, to care you have to really feel. Each one, separately, from inside, one to one. Empathy means my self-interest equals yours, if we don't agree there's no empathy and nothing can change. We don't have empathy for people of the third world until we feel ourselves in their place, equally, we don't have empathy for the world unless we feel it inside us. The problem is we don't actually live long enough to really feel it properly. By the time we have learned what empathy really means the next generation is re-learning new 'isms' or re-has.h.i.+ng old ones, so the merry-go-round goes on. But we now know we can survive with relative ease, globally there are more that enough resources to go round, and at the same time allow the planet to replenish itself. Culturally we still spend too much time looking over our shoulders in fear that someone is going to take what we have away from us. There's no sense of permanence any more to hold us together in a forward motion. The old religions provided this, even communism had an external potentiality to aim for, a spiritual dimension, if you like, outside of us. But all that's gone now, there are just too many alternatives to believe in, none of which have a claim on ultimate authority. So we are thrown on ourselves in a way unprecedented in history just at the time when we might fail the planet. If things don't change soon, we risk a return to scarcity, and will almost certainly resort to the re-use of worn out, threadbare cultural mechanisms as if they were new. Even now in the absence of any unifying truths we find new fictions to excuse the enslaving of individuals according to some doctrine or other. Or we find 'good' reasons to continue tearing up the Earth. It doesn't actually matter which 'ism' you take up, the point is they are all regressive, backward looking. So we take what we want first, and ask questions later. Most people don't have the luxury of having the choice to exercise their conscience about it. For the Amazonian peasant, not to despoil the rain forest is to die of hunger in the present, he's not in a position to consider the future. The change we need is to feel the Earth's mortality as if it was our own and to make Her our new G.o.d through each person alive individually giving the Earth Her due. I've though very hard about it Penny, and I believe our trump-card is that I cannot think any generation would consciously prepare itself to be the last. Our task is to give people the resources to have the s.p.a.ce and time to change enough so that through their empathy with the Earth, they can finally accept their individual mortality and more importantly through it, the immortality of the species when linked to that of the Earth. That's why what 'They' are up to, has got to be what we are up to, but we can't do it in the same way. The Earth is as important to them as to us. If I am right, their continued existence has no importance for us as ours has none for them. We each have the same business to attend to but for quite different motives. So let them have their own family business secrets if they like, as long as we converge on the important things.'

He paused this was a much longer speech than he had intended at the outset, but he felt he was working something out in his own mind and needed to say it all: 'What worries me is we seem to share a common technology, at least their technology parallels ours in some way and Alexander it seems is expected to manage the cross-over. If he is the one chosen by 'Them' it makes sense to leave it to him to show us in what way we can use their system to mesh with ours.'

Penny searched his face. Whether it was the strain, the tensions of the last weeks or just the sheer hard work, she did not know, but she was unable to stem the tears which were flowing silently from her. They clasped hands in a bond which would take them both time to fully appreciate.

'You see.' He went on animatedly, now holding her again. Penny bit her lip and allowed Ric to continue.

'So the problem of the Earth is actually shared, between us and 'Them' in JNO, and with Alexander. We've got the opportunity now to make this a last ditch attempt to save Her.'

'We start now?' she whispered.

'Yes. Now.' They held each other tightly. They held each other for what seemed like a long time and Penny felt a surge of s.e.xual desire not sensed since her first sight of Alexis. This was a man she knew understood her needs and ambitions, her feelings for her son and above all shared her awareness of 'Them' in the same way.

'We've a great deal to do,' she said softly. 'I think we need to sit down and work out our strategy for JNO, sector by sector.

Chapter 15.

Alexander had no idea of the pa.s.sage of time since his confrontation with the computer screen. His pursuit of the intruder on the 'sphere had taken all his mental capacities, and he felt his body crumple as if from far away. Moments before Hep pulled him back, he thought about staying in the 'sphere for ever, a mind like the other flashes he had encountered, his body left useless in its chair, with what was the core of him liberated as pure thought. So seductive was this possibility that he resented Hep pulling him back to his body and sought to fight him off. Hep, like rescuing a drowning man struggling against his own saving, had cut him off from the 'sphere and he had fallen back into his unconscious body.

He woke to find himself in a bed, in a pleasant, simple room, with net curtains in a bay window. There was a fifties style wardrobe suite, a self-a.s.sembly bedside-table complete with frilly lamp. In the middle of the window was a kidney shaped dressing table with a central heart shaped mirror chamfered at the edge and two half-mirrors on piano-hinges at either side. A stripy dressing gown hung on a bra.s.s hook of the painted oak-grained door to the room. A jug of orange juice and a clean gla.s.s were on the bedside table. He moved his head to find he was in striped pyjamas, and was immediately aware that his head seemed no longer to be part of his body. He had the mother and father of all headaches and found it least painful to remain as still as possible. His mind fortunately was unexpectedly quite lucid. Bodily things could be separated from it.

This was a new sensation. He found will-power alone enabled him to disconnect his body from his mind. A headache like this one would once have prevented him from thinking of anything else. Now mind and body could be separated into two quite different areas of being. The experience of the 'sphere had enriched his thinking powers. As if a door in his mind was ajar. Access to the 'sphere was simply a matter of desiring to enter. In his mind's eye he saw it literally as a door offering a threshold to the Chronosphere. He could push the door open and cross the sill. His body, contradicting his mind, told him to do no such thing, it had had enough for now and he wasn't to push his luck.

Before he could argue this one out with himself, the door to the room gently opened. He waited until the someone crossed his field of vision, it being unwise to move his head. The dark face taking up the light belonged to Marina and he quickly conjured up his memory of her on the stair at Markham. Her presence filled him with a pleasure which surged involuntarily but wonderfully from his loins. He was certainly pleased to see her and worried she would be aware of his involuntary desire.

'You're awake then.' Marina placed a cool hand on his forehead. 'How do you feel?' The sound of her voice so real and so human, was a surprising contrast to the way his mind felt and which had so disembodied him. The real world of people had felt extremely remote. This separation of body and mind seemed to be something 'either-or'. He could embrace one or the other, but not both at once. This continual jumping from one state of being to another was uncomfortably disruptive, he would have to learn to handle things better if it were not to drive him mad. For now, his sense of reality resided entirely in the pulsing of his rock-like erection, as he luxuriated in Marina's presence. She was all velvet softness, making feel him safe. He could give himself up to her and forget all about the complexities of his upbringing and his confused relations.h.i.+ps. With her he felt....uncluttered.

'Don't move your head, Hep said you'd have quite a headache when you woke'

'I'm not,' he whispered. 'Rather I can't - did he say how long it would last?'

'Not long, you'll be okay soon'.

'Stroke my head again, it helps.' But he was more aware of the extreme tension inside his pyjamas than anything else. Marina sat on the bed and stroked his forehead with a cool hand. The curve of her cheek, the way her lashes moved, the blackness of her eyes, the softness of her skin, her touch, made most of the pain in his head slide away and the ache was now in his rampant p.e.n.i.s, his body reacting involuntarily to her touch. She had to be aware of the affect she was having.

She smiled, her face close to his, she leaned forward and kissed him very gently, but fully on the lips. He could not believe it. He tried to kiss her back, but an explosion in his head prevented him from doing anything requiring action on his part. He relaxed and Marina holding his head in both her hands, kissed him again, deeply, soothingly.

'You are full of tension, Hep says I am to relax you, the headache will go and there's only one sure way to relax a man,' she grinned broadly. She stroked his belly under the pyjamas top, and loosening the draw string to his bottoms, exposed him. As he could not move his head to see, he concentrated on the wavy line of the crack in the plaster of the ceiling. If this was supposed to be therapy he could take as much as she wanted to give.

'Let everything go and leave it to me,' she hummed huskily. As she worked on him his mind first went into a tumult and then gradually emptied. The sensations from her hands, lips and tongue sent emollient tides of tranquillity coursing through his nerve ends to the core of his brain. Wonderfully the pain ceased by degrees and other more vigorous emotions began to take over. Marina sensing the change, began expertly to ma.s.sage his body so he again relaxed and closing his eyes left his body to her and his mind to float above him. He was so far in her hands, that he did as she bade and left everything to her. It was she who controlled the climax to which she eventually brought him, which was enormously prolonged and seemed to come from somewhere deep inside his head and his spinal cord at the same time. As his body responded to her ministrations, the tension was drawn, sucked out with his sperm, like an evil spirit from him - letting go its grip from the top of his head and leaving smoothly through the soles of his feet. He slept like a baby.

When he woke, the headache was gone and he was rested and full of well-being. He was alone. He rose from the bed, went to the window and parted the opaque, heavy, white nets. There were suburban mock-Tudor houses on the opposite side of the tree studded road, lining broad gra.s.s verges. The house he was in was of similar design. Expensive cars were in the drives, mostly new. Several had personalised number plates. On this evidence he decided he was in some leafy suburb, probably in North London - Stanmore or Cannon's Park. Somewhere salubrious but totally anonymous. He did not recognise the car parked in the drive to the house. It was not in JNO livery. He opened the wardrobe and finding clothes to fit him, dressed in jeans and s.h.i.+rt, and opened the door. The staircase led to a s.p.a.cious, dark, oak panelled entrance hall. The whole place was unchanged from the 50's as if owned by elderly people who having made it the epitome of modernity in 1955 had done nothing to it since. He opened the door to the large front lounge and went in. Thea was sitting in a flowery armchair, by the baronial-style fireplace, cool as the sphinx, her hair smoothly raised up on her head in a tight bun.

'h.e.l.lo Alexi mou, you seem sprightly.' She laughed pleasantly and stood to embrace him. Alexander was still in a state of relaxed empty headedness thanks to Marina's skill. He embraced his twin as if it were quite normal for both of them to be in this house and to find her in the room was quite expected. Gradually a sense of reality filtered through to him and he realised he had no idea where he was nor how long he had been there; nor yet any reason for his being there; or what might happen next. It came to him that nothing had made any rational sense since the meeting with Lucina. Rationality had gone out of the window and normality was the appearance and disappearance of G.o.ds, demi-G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. An Alice-Through-the-Looking-Gla.s.s world where what was real was out of reach and what was illusion, all too real. He managed, just, to keep the sensation of Marina as a definite link to reality. Otherwise he had pa.s.sed through an invisible barrier, and could now go back and forth without warning or reason. Thea said nothing, he sat obliquely to her on the matching print sofa.

'Where's Marina?' His question betrayed the thought uppermost in his mind.

'She's not far away. She's with Hep. They're busy on security matters.' He wanted to know what she meant by 'security matters' but he let it go, rightly a.s.suming from her demeanour that Thea had other things on her mind. Before letting her take the inevitable lead, he asked, 'Where are we. And what are we doing here?'

'We're in one of Marina's safe houses, you don't need to know where. What we are doing will become clear as we go on, I'm sorry to be cryptic, but it's hard to explain simply, just trust me and Hep. Where's Zeus' net?'

'I don't know, Hep must have taken it from me when I pa.s.sed out. Why?'

'You'll need it. Stay here and I'll get it from him.'

Alone in the room Alexander delved into his mind to see if he could easily find his mental door. Locating it at once he pushed it fully open and was immediately peering into the sunlit terrace of Psathi. He saw Mnemosyne, she smiled up at him, Hera stood at the railing high above the blue Mediterranean. He could choose to enter or not. He chose not and mentally pulled the door to. Then, experimentally he went back to it and opened it once more. He saw Pannie in a clearing in a wood, quite naked and intently stroking his swollen p.e.n.i.s, an impatient nymph lay open-legged on the gra.s.s at his feet, waiting. He mentally shut the door again. He could control the door but not what he would find on the other side.

'When you've finished playing with your new toy, perhaps we could get down to some important business,'

Thea handed him the fine golden mesh which he threw over his shoulders in a s.h.i.+mmer of colour, as she broke into his thoughts on L1.

'You're getting better at the 'sphere, but it's still difficult for you, the net will help, without it, it would be hard for you if not impossible. It's going to be difficult enough, that's why Zeus didn't want you on the 'sphere and only gave you Hep's net as an aid when he knew there was no alternative in the time available. It simply takes too long to learn how to use the 'sphere and mortals don't live long enough to make it worth their while. Too soon you're a mere spirit on the way to Hades. Still you're all we've got; so the sooner we get you trained the better. By the way, the 'door' image is a good one as a mnemonic. I see you can now summons it any time, but you need to be able to know where and when and above all why you want to be on the other side.'

As Thea communicated with him, like a hammer blow to his psyche he realised this 'other world' simply wasn't ever going to go away. Illusion was reality and reality had...well...slipped away.

'Alexander, I wish you'd pay attention to what I'm trying to get through to you! Yes, yes, you'd better get used to the idea that things have changed. You've crossed the threshold, there's no way back. We have to make the 'sphere work for you despite the steepness of the learning curve. At least Mnemosyne gave you a head start. You have a task to fulfil which only the offspring of a G.o.d and mortal can do if it's to work properly. So let's stop all the angst and get on with it. Zeus made you and we are to train you, and I'm here to see it gets done.'

Clouds of doubt again rose to interfere with the thought meld. Unlike Pannie in the same situation, Thea would have none of it. She had shared a womb with this mortal, she knew him.

'Let me begin by explaining how the Chronosphere works.'

They continued to communicate on L2. Anyone entering the room would have seen two people sitting silently. Thea was well into the thought meld, when Alexander soundlessly interjected to separate the bond. His mortal half was in danger of comprehension overload. Though he absorbed the facts, his lack of experience prevented him from understanding more than a fraction of the real meaning. He sensed her exasperation and, her resignation to his weakness. More worrying was a transmission from her of the notion that in the circ.u.mstances, he would probably learn best by doing. She would therefore launch him on his task with the knowledge all of them had so far implanted in his mind and let the rest of his understanding come from confrontation with events. They would all tune in on the 'sphere whatever they were doing and take s.h.i.+fts to be personally available.

Thea was to remain on duty for the time being. Others would a.s.sist as circ.u.mstances determined - on call. Hera would wait in the wings as befitted her status and Zeus kept his normal aloof overview of everything. All this occurred place on L2 and on balance he considered it best that the finer details of this condensed communication was largely outside the span of his comprehension. It was like listening to a foreign language he got the gist but missed the gradations of meaning.

This part of the mutual thought transmission, over, he felt Thea prompt him towards the door in his mind. She urged him to push it open. Beyond the threshold he was aware of streams of light on a dark background. They were like electric pulses made manifest, parcels of information conducted along cables of light. He tentatively put out his hand to touch, and feeling nothing, ventured further.

Thea's presence urged him onwards, a spur and a strength. She was like a coach with faith in his ability to venture difficult manoeuvres while she willed him on, supportively, at his own pace. With an effort of will, he crossed the threshold. Immediately his mind was struck with a ma.s.s of information which streamed through and round him like visible rays. He was buffeted, but unharmed.

This was not the same Chronosphere he had travelled before. It was a poor imitation lacking its breadth and depth. By comparison it was one dimensional. It was merely a large switchboard for transmitting information. No being was detectable and some of the pulses of information material seemed to become lost, then slowed down and were extinguished for lack of directional power. It was a shoddy kind of 'sphere.

Thea's mind propelled him onwards to follow the direction of the mainstream, which thinned as it went, but with a surprising current of force despite the detectable and continuous loss from its overall ma.s.s. His mind followed and hovered at a point where the main-stream of information fed into what he understood to be a computer terminal. A faint code number was etched at the entry port which Thea prompted him to memorise.

The mainstream was joined by another branch of electrical activity. He sensed the link to be poorly accomplished. It was attempting to divert the mainstream, but without success. As his mind flicked around the system, the activity, disconnected and s.h.i.+fted to flow round the impulses which held his thought pattern. Amoeba like, it surrounded the electrical thrust of his mind and he sensed it as trying to read him as if he were a message. Unable to shake off the sensation of being surrounded and absorbed he panicked only to discover he could do nothing. The panic subsided a little when he found he was not cut off again from the body he had left on the other side of the door, as he feared from his Markham experience.

Grateful for his continual ability to summons the door icon before him, he could see Thea on the other side of the sill, urging him onwards. The surrounding electrical field as if finding him incomprehensible, swung away and reattached itself to the main-stream. Thea was urging him to follow the direction of the intruding flow. This was less easy as it was much weaker than the mainstream. A faint, but regular pulse, indicated its direction, which was easily lost in a ma.s.s of static material which was without any apparent purpose. Thea stayed in touch on L2 and by following her instructions he was able to hold on. Eventually the intruding line strengthened which made it easier to follow. This line also ended in a computer terminal. He noted the code number of this too. Thea was beckoning at the door, he crossed the threshold and came to his body in the lounge, maintaining the L2 link with his twin.

In his absence Hep had arrived and was already linked into L2 with them. An intense mind-meld ensued which Alexander found he could more or less follow and even contribute now and then, mostly with queries. This triadic communication covered much ground, occasionally hitting level 3 nuances which intrigued Alexander's mind, but it was in too rarefied a range for his full comprehension: it was like they were speaking the language he was learning but at normal pace and with their own much more extensive vocabulary.

Bit by bit he was uncovering more and more of the 'sphere. He noted how Hep and Thea used it smoothly and easily as naturally as breathing. If anything they were more at home in the thought regions of the 'sphere than in the physical reality of the world. It occurred to him that this was their natural plane of existence rather than the physical world and was thereby even more amazed at his ability to link to them at all.

Hep's mind was finely honed, intensely practical and inventive, Thea's ordered, clear and honest. By contrast Alexander felt clumsy and uncouth, an ignorant interloper. Several times he almost disengaged. He had been okay with Pannie, his simpler mind was equally at home on the lower levels of the 'sphere, and Alexander had felt less intimidated. These more august users ignored his feelings of inadequacy, including him fully with their intertwining thoughts as if he were an equal. He was flattered, and kept pace as best he could, lapsing into reverie when they soared and dipped beyond his understanding.

He understood through his limited grasp that the information stream he had observed and followed was not the Chronosphere at all, but the crude internet invented by mortals for their own s.p.a.celess communication and the system being used by Penny for her grand plan. It was nothing compared with the 'sphere but little as it was, it was all they had. His visit there had two purposes.

First they agreed that to carry out his task, Alexander needed to know more about the way GAIANET used the Internet to feed into HIGO. It was important for him to know intimately how it worked. To understand how it was to be tied into the 'sphere without anyone, G.o.ds or mortals knowing the two were to be linked, apart, of course, from the senior members of the Firm, who would keep the knowledge secure. He needed to be able to mind-travel between the 'sphere and the Internet along the links only they could make.